


The Clean Get Away

by idanato



Series: The Darkest Mage Timeline [5]
Category: Fire Emblem: Fuukasetsugetsu | Fire Emblem: Three Houses
Genre: Gen, Minor Angst, Mostly Fluff, Slice of Life
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-17
Updated: 2019-11-17
Packaged: 2021-02-08 00:20:31
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,146
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21466942
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/idanato/pseuds/idanato
Summary: Hubert has to get to Enbarr for some empire business, but a quick goodbye to Bernadetta turns into him cleaning her room and finding some letters from her father.
Relationships: Bernadetta von Varley & Hubert von Vestra
Series: The Darkest Mage Timeline [5]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1536886
Comments: 10
Kudos: 90





	The Clean Get Away

**Author's Note:**

> A brief interlude while I plot out Hubert and Lysithea's road trip to Enbarr.

Hubert did one last check around his room to make sure he’d taken everything important. He was leaving for Enbarr and he was not coming back to Garreg Mach, at least not as a student, so he had to clean out his dorm room. He’d never been one for keeping many personal items and that made it incredibly easy to move.

There was a knock at his door and Hubert hurried to answer in case Lady Edelgard had any last minute orders to give him. He was greeted with a plush pegasus held up to his face, a mess of purple hair just visible behind it.

The pegasus stuffed animal had seen better days; it had recent sustained life threatening wounds courtesy of the knights of Seiros when they searched his room for dark magic paraphernalia. When Edelgard had taken it away he assumed she was doing him the favor of disposing of the body because he could not bear to. But here it was again, with bright fabric patches and delicate floral embroidery along its injuries.

“You fixed Peggles?” He could barely believe it as he accepted the mended stuffed animal and inspected the loving care that Bernadetta had put into repairing it.

“Mmhmm,” nodded Bernadetta. Her eyes were firmly fixed at the floor. “I’m really sorry I didn’t have any matching fabric, Edelgard said there wasn’t much time, so —”

“It’s perfect, thank you,” said Hubert as he continued to find more tiny mends.

“I-I’m glad you like it,” rushed Bernadetta in surprise. “Oh! I also made you this.”

She dug around in her bag and produced a green knit cap that she handed up to him, “Edelgard said you were riding to Enbarr, and well, it’s really cold out! I thought now that your hair’s short you might need a hat.”

Hubert accepted the soft knit hat and tried it on. It was the perfect length to get over his ears, but maybe just a bit big as it pooled near his neck. “How did you know dark green is my favorite color? Have you been studying my preferences?”

Bernadetta went white, “I wasn’t spying on you! I was going to make it black but Edelgard suggested green, she’s the spy!”

Hubert removed the hat and added it with the pegasus to his travel bag. He turned back around and was very careful not to make any direct eye contact with Bernadetta, “These are really thoughtful gifts, thank you.” He wasn’t going to see her for a while and he wasn’t sure if the next time they met if they’d be friend or foe. He liked Bernadetta even if she was deathly scared of him. She was certainly weird, but so was he, and he’d really miss her if she didn’t side with the Empire.

Hubert thought about what a normal person would do and decided that a hug goodbye was a natural thing even if he wasn’t very good at hugging. He didn’t give Bernadetta any time to escape his grasps as his long arms swung around her. She emitted a high pitched panicked peep and then when limp in his arms. She had fainted.

Hubert looked into the hallway hoping there were no witnesses. This was why he didn’t hug people! He sighed and hefted her under his arm to haul her back to her room.

Bernadetta’s room was locked but he knew she kept her room key on a necklace. He carefully tipped her forward and tried to shake it out of her shirt. He then brought her in close while being mindful not to bop her head against the handle as he unlocked the door.

The room was dark and crowded with stuff. The air was stale. Hubert went to place Bernadetta in her bed and get the heck out of there when he noticed there was a dirty plate and a fork in the sheet. _Oh no Bernie, no_. Hubert could not help himself as he went to the black out curtains and opened them to let some sunlight into this messy room. He wished he hadn’t. This was a crazy person’s room.

Stuff was strewn everywhere with no apparent organization. The bed was unmade, perhaps never made, and there were multiple plates and cutlery visible in the folds of the blankets. Hubert’s mouth was hanging open as he studied the place. He could not leave for Enbarr in good conscience knowing she was trapped in such squalor.

He looked at Bernadetta and her eyes were still rolling in her head. He had some time to clean. He _needed_ to clean.

It was cold out but Hubert cracked the window open slightly to get some fresh air circulating. That already improved the ambiance of the room. He carefully collected all the stolen dining hall utensils, the plates with crumbs and dried up sauces, a full bowl of old soup hiding near a pillow, and multiple half empty glasses and piled them up neatly outside the door. The sheets were stiff, how could she possibly sleep in these? He was sure now that she had never changed the bed since arriving at Garreg Mach so many months ago. With great gusto Hubert stripped the bed and sprinted to the community linen closet.

He didn’t have time to do her laundry for her but he could at least replace the sheets. He made the bed in record time and was very satisfied with how the clean lines of the bed popped against the utter chaos of the mess around it. He put Bernadetta on top of the comforter and arranged her head on a pillow. Okay, that was probably enough.

Hubert kicked some dirty uniforms into the hamper as he did a perimeter check. There were colored pencils all over the place. Hubert sighed as he picked them up and collected them together. They were all different sizes and varying degrees of sharpness. Hubert serendipitously located the pencil sharpener and figured he had enough time to make these even. When he was finished he arranged them in a rainbow on her desk.

He picked up her homework and spied on the doodle in the corner. It was a cartoon of Byleth with “_blah blah gauntlets_” written in a speech bubble by her lips. Hubert smirked. There was another little doodle in the margin of Petra rappelling down the side of the page with a knife in her mouth. They were pretty good. Hubert sat down and continued to flip through. There were a couple of Dorothea with little musical notes around her. One of Ferdinand saying his name. Caspar bench pressing a sleeping Linhardt above his head, sweating and saying “_muscles!_”. Hubert got to one of him. He had a little slit for an eye and his hair was blocking the other side of his cartoon face as a forked tongue flicked out of his lips. His speech bubble read, “_Have you finished your hissssstory homework yet?!_” Hubert shut the notebook, that was enough of that.

He straightened her books out, and neatly stacked her papers on her desk. He found a never used dust rag near the closet and took the liberty of brushing away the dirt that had settled around her potted plants. He organized her yarn by fiber type and color, and crawled on the carpet looking for stray sewing needles and pins. Hubert was satisfied that this room was now livable. It wasn’t 100% clean, but at least now it was bright and inviting. He saw some letters peaking out from under the dust ruffle and braced himself for the chaos that was surely under her bed.

Alas it was just roving gangs of dust bunnies and a pile of letters. Hubert pulled them out and found that they all bore the seal of House Varley, and hadn’t been opened. The pile represented months of correspondence from Bernadetta’s father that she had ignored. She was too afraid to open them, and too afraid to throw them away. Hubert glanced up at the bed — Bernadetta was still passed out — and got out his pen knife to open the letters. He felt his brow stitching together as he read them. If Dorothea was writing a play about nobles, she would surely include a dastardly character exactly like Count Varley. The man was a caricature of entitlement and gracelessness in court, and based on these letters, he was no different at home.

Hubert heard shifting above him and scrambled to hide the evidence, but he was caught. “Hubert! Waa, why are you reading those?” She looked down at him in abject horror as she tried to grab the horrible letters from his hands. “This is my private business!”

Hubert guiltily gave them back. She looked around her room, “Whose room is this?”

“Uh, it’s yours, but clean,” said Hubert as he got up and awkwardly gestured around at his work.

She looked even more upset with him, “I was cultivating that mess, it was almost perfect!”

“You were living in a dump,” snapped Hubert. He went over to the window and pointed, “Fresh air, light! You need these things. Plus it was dangerous in here, do you know how many pins I found in your carpet? Six!”

“Nooo,” moaned Bernadetta as she enveloped herself in her pillows. “Go away! Please!”

Hubert took a deep breath, this wasn’t exactly the goodbye he’d hoped for but he did have to get going. There was one other matter nagging in his mind; what would Bernadetta think about what Edelgard and Hubert were about to do with her father? The plan was to place him under house arrest to ensure cooperation of his territory, but after seeing those letters Hubert thought a harsher punishment might be warranted.

Hubert sat on her desk chair, “Bernadetta, I’m sorry I read your letters. I,” he paused. He really shouldn’t have violated her privacy like that, “I got the sense your father is not very pleasant.”

He watched her body get stiff and then very small as she folded up in silence.

Hubert sighed, this was becoming the worst goodbye ever. “Hypothetically, no consequences to worry about, what would you choose to do with your father if he was being sentenced for a crime?”

Bernadetta made some incomprehensible sound from beneath the blankets.

“Again, just your opinion, would you put him under house arrest, or execute him?” He still had to make a decision about what to do with his own father when the coup occurred.

That got her attention. She sat up a bit and looked at him, perhaps for the first time, in the eye. Her voice was very small and hard to hear, “I don’t think I would kill him.”

“Permanent exile in Dagda perhaps?” supplied Hubert.

Bernadetta closed her eyes and brought her knees up so she could rest her chin on them. “My father scares me even more than you do.” She shook slightly, “My mom had servants literally kidnap me and take me here to get me away from him. I don’t even want to know what he did for her for that.”

Hubert found himself sitting up in the chair. He remembered Bernadetta’s mother from the party following the battle of the eagle and the lion that Bernadetta had been absent from. Bernadetta’s mother didn’t speak unless directly addressed by Count Varley, and she wore a permanent scared expression.

Bernadetta had thrown her hood up over her head, “My father thinks I’m unmarriageable, and he tried to fix that. Tried to fix me.”

“There’s nothing wrong with you,” started Hubert even though as he said it the words came out hollow. She was clearly messed up.

Bernadetta shook slightly, “He’d leave me tied to a chair for hours at a time, to train me to be a submissive wife.”

“_What?_” Hubert was on the edge of the chair now and his facial expression must have been something horrid because Bernadetta yelped as she looked at him a buried her face again.

“Please don’t tell anyone, forget I said it!”

“Tied to a chair,” muttered Hubert in anger. “And you _don’t_ want him executed?” Hubert was already thinking up creative ways to kill the Count.

“No,” whispered Bernadetta. “Just because he’s horrible doesn’t mean I want to be horrible back.”

Hubert sighed as he got up. “Thank you for trusting me with this, I promise I won’t tell anyone.” He wasn’t going to hug her goodbye again, but he did do a quick bow. “I’ll see you around Bernadetta, take care.”

He was going to put Count Varley under house arrest after all. That did not mean it would be pleasant. Hubert formulated some very specific instructions for Varley’s jailers; he would be left tied to a chair for hours a day so that he could learn to become a submissive lord.

**Author's Note:**

> No permadeath for peggles the pegasus.


End file.
